World History 101: Marco Rubio’s Version

Standing before the Athenian Acropolis, bathed in the setting sun, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the story of Western civilization, as he sees it.

Many politicos watched with interest as Marco Rubio,  a top Republican contender for the 2028 presidential election, made what seemed like his bid to be the heir apparent of the MAGA movement. And while many oval office hopefuls have begun their campaigns by airing out their visions of America’s place in the world and the ideals it stands for, few have done what Rubio did in Athens on October 7th: present their thoughts on the whole of Western history and civilization. We should try to understand what he said and, perhaps more importantly, who has said it before. What Rubio left out was just as telling as what he chose to include 

Rubio’s speech wove through Western history, from Socrates to Apollo 11 and Thermopylae to the Alamo, laying out the common threads that tie them together. He extolled the alleged Western values of “the ambition to explore the unknown,” “the pursuit of excellence,” and “the ideal of the great man.” The thesis of his argument was that the West, unlike the rest, dared to strive, to triumph, and to overcome, and that the United States, under Donald Trump, would carry that 2,500-year-old torch into the future. 

Of course, this all sounds very lofty, but it’s far from the whole story of “The West.” It doesn’t take much to enumerate the list of Western atrocities, or all the times it failed to live up to those same high ambitions Rubio claims it embodies. The Secretary himself dared to brush up, barely, on the genocide of indigenous peoples, the devastating effects of imperialism and colonization in Africa and Asia, or even the inherent contradiction in posing the defenders of the Alamo as champions of the West, when they fought the very Western Mexican government. A simple fact-check reveals this side of Western history. No one should be surprised that Rubio, in telling his idealistic version of the West, would leave out such sins and discrepancies. What’s truly telling, however, are the lofty, idealistic stories of Western history that he chose to leave out.

In over 3,500 words, as he listed what the West has succeeded in, Rubio uttered ‘democracy’ only twice (both in the same paragraph), a telling admission, as he stood in the spot famed as its birthplace. ‘Representation,’ ‘rule of law,’ and even ‘equality’ were nowhere to be found. ‘Liberty’ was only said once, and solely in reference to the English.

Rubio’s version of what the West stands for, while sounding brave and daring at first, seems to have no place for these other ideals, despite how entrenched they are in the history of ‘The West.’ Through this divergence in what’s being said and what’s left out, two conceptions of what “The West” even is emerge. On one hand, you have Rubio’s version: one that strives to overcome, to conquer, and to be the best, led by “the ideal of the great man” who will deliver on those promises. On the other hand sits the West of consensus, fairness, and equality before the law, led by the common people working together towards the common good. 

It would be wrong to argue that one story of Western history is more true than the other. The same constitution that guaranteed representative democracy also counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person. The Roman Empire, built by the politicians Rubio seems to admire, was just as real as the Roman Republic that preceded it. These two versions of history are intertwined, but we choose which story we value and which we scorn. And Rubio certainly spoke of that other version of Western history with scorn. As he himself put it, “Too often these days, we build downwards. We design our standards to ensure no one will lose… We hold the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre.” 

Rubio is far from the first politician to use this might-makes-right rhetoric of Western civilization to prove a point. Going back a century, right-wing theorists and writers, such as Oswald Spengler in his pivotal The Decline of the West, similarly saw their societies as being reduced or devolved from the supposedly high lives and ideals of bygone eras. Or as Rubio himself puts it, “Our prosperity somehow became a source of guilt.  We no longer believed we deserved and had earned our greatness.”

During the interwar era, when these theories of a declining Western civilization were first spread and promoted, the world was in a period of deep uncertainty and instability, coming out of the First World War and teetering into the next, all while European nations faced deep economic disorder ranging from depression to hyperinflation. It should come as no surprise that many at the time gravitated to theories of a declining order and a devolved civilization. Yet the results of these ideas were dangerous and devastating. Spengler published his diagnosis of the West’s decline in two volumes, in 1918 and 1922. In the following two decades, his ideas would morph into the textbook rhetoric of fascist demagogues such as Hitler and Mussolini.

Across Europe, many found an answer to their feelings of a declining, decadent society through fascism and its charismatic leaders, such as Benito Mussolini (above). The ideology took advantage of pessimistic societies to inflict grievous harm, all in the name of “The West.”

It should be no surprise, then, that Rubio closes with a call to action against the enemies of his vision of the West. He contrasts “the heroes of the West are those who choose to remain faithful to their duty…” and “...fanatics like the radical mullahs of Iran, whose cult of death hails child suicide bombers as national heroes.” By framing America’s war against Iran as a war to defend the West from its non-Western enemies, Rubio redirects the same social pessimism he has already channeled into his idea of the West toward an easy outside target. Again, he would be far from the first to do it.

Much, of course, could be said about America’s dichotomy of “West vs. East,” and how it’s been used time and again to justify military interventions and foreign interference. Many scholars, such as Edward Said, have pointed out that the West has, in part, defined itself by what it is not. Tellingly, however, that rhetoric once took the form of Western democracy and liberalism opposed to Eastern despotism and superstition. Now, leaders like Rubio seem to be making the case for a supposedly superior Western despotism opposed to its Eastern counterpart. Much like before, even though both stories are convenient political fictions, ostensibly with the same goals, Rubio’s version of the West purposefully leaves out ideals of democracy and equality for a muscular vision of brute force domination.

Some may argue, cynically, that this rhetorical difference doesn’t matter if the real-world political outcomes are seemingly the same. Why should we care what the American government says its intentions are, when its actions, now and in the past, speak for themselves? Still, the political stories we tell ourselves matter. This rhetoric does matter. If Rubio’s history lesson is right about one thing, it’s that the history of the West has been long and complicated. To many people living within the ‘Western world,’ that idea holds ideological weight, and, as we’ve seen, it can be manipulated and channeled into powerful and dangerous political ideology.

Today, many of the same feelings of pessimism and decline that first gave rise to Fascism have returned. Preying on these feelings is what makes speeches like Rubio’s so damaging.

The idea of “The West” is far from perfect, and its history has been deeply steeped in atrocities and inequalities. At the same time, other ideas, like democracy, representation, and liberty, have also been passed down to the present, at times more powerfully than others. As long as the idea of a Western tradition holds sway, we should try to tell a story that promotes these ideas, while acknowledging, without endorsing, that insidious side. History is more than the conquerors and imperialists that Marco Rubio seems to think it is.